**********************musings of a mountain girl, homeschooling mom, and firefighter's wife**********************

Sunday, October 10, 2010

4 Tons

Want to know what 4 tons of firewood looks like?

We recently picked up some mulch for our dog runs and part of our backyard. The Tree Guy became very interested when he learned we heat our house with wood, primarily cottonwood and aspen. Evidently, Tree Guy is a misnomer. A better description would be something like Loggerman. The guy is huge, and runs a one man show. He even has a little crane attached to the trailer he uses to load the beasties. He probably doesn't even use it. I think he could pick up a car by himself. Anyway, he wanted to know if we wanted to take 4 tons of cottonwood off his hands. We jumped at it. Free wood, already bucked...that's a no-brainer. Jackpot! So, MacGyver picked up the trailer on his way home from work. Our truck did pretty good pulling this massive beast, until he hit our road. Evidently, four-wheel drive became a necessity to get it up our road. I have never seen anything like it! The cottonwood tree was three feet in diameter. Each piece must have been 150 pounds...and they were cut in 1-2 foot sections.

I think we are going to have to cut each section into thirds just to get it into the splitter. We spent an hour unloading (or rolling them off the trailer, really), sorting and stacking by size. We have another pile of wood that is waiting to be bucked and then we'll have to rent a splitter and get serious. I think we probably have our necessary 4 chords of wood to get us through the winter. One step closer to being ready for winter! It seems odd that we were having 75-80 degree days and now it is rainy and cold. But I'm not compaining! I'm thankful for delaying the inevitable for as long as possible.

And then Ike decided he wanted to take a stab at breaking up some of the pieces. Check out the concentration! What he doesn't know is as he gets better and stronger it won't be a matter of trying it out...it will actually become one of his chores!